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J. C. Taylor business papers and blueprints
Notifications
Held at: Delaware County Historical Society [Contact Us]408 Avenue of the States, Chester, Pennsylvania, 19013
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Delaware County Historical Society. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
J. C. (Joshua C.) Taylor (1873-1946) was a prominent banker and lawyer in the city of Chester, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. He was born in Rochdale, England in 1873 but immigrated to the United States as a child. He settled in Chester, where he established a law office and worked with James A. Cochrane. In 1931 he established Taylor Memorial Arboretum in memory of his wife, Anne Rulon Gray. Fifteen years later, in 1946, he passed away.
This collection consists mostly of legal and property-related documents, including a large number of blueprints. There are legal files roughly sorted by property, organization, and document type (e.g. audit files, mortgage investments); court records, especially relating to estate settlements; deeds and mortgages; check stubs, 1938-1944; a file index for closed files 1911-1926; receipts from construction and other companies; and insurance policies. There is a significant amount of related correspondence, as well as some pamphlets and a few photographs and film negatives. A large quantity of blueprints, with some technical drawings and maps, are also included in the collection. They are primarily for properties in Chester, and date mostly from the 1910s.
Taylor was involved in the estate settlement of Fannie S. Thurlow Lane (daughter of John J. Thurlow), who established Fannie S. Thurlow Memorial Park as a public park in South Chester, Pa. There is a significant amount of material relating to the Lane estate in this collection.
The collection also includes a Delaware County National Bank report on examination as of 1934 (investments, loans and discounts, mortgages, vol. 11), Greenlawn Cemetery minute book (1910s-1920s), and Greenlawn Cemetery volume of capital stock certificates (1907-1908; mostly blank).
Gift of J.C. Taylor.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Delaware County Historical Society directly for more information.
People
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Delaware County Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Delaware County Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.